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Archives for September 2016

Front End

This week we completed work on the 1.1.8 release for the OpenBazaar reference client. The following features were added:

If the connection with the server is lost, the client will attempt to reconnect 5 times before showing the connection modal, and the status bar at the bottom of the app will show a connecting message when this is happening

The avatar can be rotated and saved in Settings/Page

The addresses in Settings/Addresses can be re-ordered by dragging and dropping–the first address is the default address

The follower, following, and store tabs have been made more efficient, so they take up less browser resources–this should speed up those views on slower computers

All languages have been updated with the latest translations from Transifex

A bug where addresses that start with handles were malformed if you refreshed the app and loaded them from memory was fixed

2.0

Designed the 3rd party search experience within the client

Avatar and header images can now be loaded in the Settings/Page modal, and will show on the navigation bar and the user page

The guid is shown above the social information on the user page and clicking it will copy the guid

Various improvements to the styling of the views

SPECIAL EXTRAS!

We have finished the build process and are almost done with deployment on a tool that will make setting up an OpenBazaar shop incredibly simple. We are finishing testing it in production right now then will work on beautifying it a bit before rolling it out in the next couple of weeks!

In these posts we take a look at some unique members of the OpenBazaar ecosystem. Today we interview Kyle from the band Myco, which released their new EP exclusively on OpenBazaar for the first week. You can find the Myco store on OpenBazaar, and on Duosearch as well.

Tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Kyle Henry, I’m from Kansas City and started Myco in 2015 after moving back to Kansas City from Hong Kong, where I lived between 2013 and 2015 and taught English as my primary job.

Before moving to Hong Kong I studied botany and mycology and discovered how amazing fungus really is. It is essentially the backbone of ecological systems on land and acts as a decentralized network or internet for organisms on the earth. Plants and fungus form symbiotic relationships and communicate through these fungal networks.

A few years later after I had begun my scientific studies I got involved with bitcoin in 2011 when I started mining them with my GPU. The next year it became pretty much impossible to do so, but I mined about 15 before that happened. While in Hong Kong I continued promoting and using bitcoin and talking to Hong Kong natives about it where ever I went. I found that many people in the tech field there were already aware of bitcoin but most weren’t involved in it. While living there I used bitcoin to transfer money between my bank accounts in the US and Hong Kong. Instead of paying ridiculous fees to do such a thing through my bank I used exchanges and often made a profit when transferring funds.

I ended up moving back to Kansas city in 2015 and started on my project. I’ve been a musician since I was about 14 and I had never officially released anything but music is my passion so I set out to make a project that embodied my beliefs of everything being interconnected and how decentralization and specifically blockchain technology can free us from our slavery. After writing and recording everything I set out to find band members to play live shows and I’ve gone through many members but eventually asked a good friend of mine Andrew MacIntyre to play drums for me. Then I found an amazing guitarist named Jesse Rodriguez and a bassist named Cory Yeager online who have helped me complete this project.

The first song we released is called “Myceliated” and is essentially about fungus and the effect it has on the universe and the human experience as well as decentralization and how bitcoin can end wars. We released this single with a bitcoin qr code on the cover and had a tremendous response from the bitcoin community. We also put a digital download of this song on OpenBazaar once OpenBazaar went public. Months later after a lot of practice the band is ready to start playing shows and we decided to release our debut 5 song EP exclusively on OpenBazaar on September 22 2016 to show our support for decentralization and freedom. The self titled EP will be released globally on most music platforms in fiat currencies on September 26 2016, but we prefer being paid directly in bitcoin.

What do you make / sell?

Original psychedelic rock music.

Why are you selling your product on OpenBazaar?

We want to support innovative platforms that make free trade and liberty possible in this ever increasing statist world.

How has your experience been with OpenBazaar so far?

Openbazaar and it’s community has been great to us so far, we have heard nothing but praise from those who have purchased our music and if we have need help with setting anything up or doing anything on OpenBazaar there has always been incredibly helpful people.

What changes would you like to see to OpenBazaar to make it more useful for you?

I would love to see a feature that allows us to setup a digital download automatically so we don’t have to manually enter everything for every single order. Also, I think it would be great if there were anonymity features built in for other users.. this I believe would push OpenBazaar into the mainstream as it would allow for free trade without the worry of government locking you in a cage.

Anything else you’d like to say?

My favorite author Aldous Huxley once said in the foreword of his book Brave New World “Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism” When he wrote this in 1932 there was no such movement but now with bitcoin and blockchain technology we have such a movement. Our goal is to spread the message of freedom through decentralization and push the movement further into the mainstream.

Front End

Added the ability for sellers to pin listings, so that they appear first in their store.

Added the ability for sellers to set a Maximum Quantity to listings. Buyers can’t buy more than that number in a single order.

If the Maximum Quantity is set to zero, the listing will still be visible, but cannot be purchased. This allows sellers to have listings that are “out of stock” or “coming soon”.

Added the ability for sellers to set listings to “hidden”. Hidden listings will not appear in the store tab of their page when other users look at the page (the owner can still see the hidden listings).

If a user enters the address of the hidden listing in the address bar, they can still see and purchase it. This allows for private listings [note that the client will not display listings with a “hidden” flag to people using the client, but third parties crawling nodes can still see the listings].

Addresses are now more flexible. The street, state/territory/region and postal code fields are all optional, and a contact field has been added, where buyers can add information like an email address or phone number.

Uploaded photos for listings will now auto-rotate based on their EXIF data. Photos that are sideways due to being taken on a mobile device will not have the correct orientation.

A bug was fixed with the review stars that caused fraction in the reviews to add an extra star.

Timezones were removed, they were intended for features that turned out not to be needed.

The list of shippable countries was removed from the purchase modal. That information is shown in the main listing page under the shipping tab.

If a buyer looks at a listing page and has no saved addresses, the section of the page that shows shippable countries will instead show a message that the user does not yet have any saved addresses.

When changing servers, the client will load the last page that specific server was on. That removes the issue where when changing servers the new server would try to load the page the previous server “remembered”.

Back End

Current version

Added “pinned” flag to listing contracts, allowing vendors to pin favored listings and have them displayed at the top of their store.

Added max quantity to listing contracts, allowing vendors to set a maximum quantity a buyer can purchase during a sale.

Added a “hidden” flag to listing contracts, allowing vendors to make certain listings visible or invisible to buyers [note that the client will not display listings with a “hidden” flag, but third parties crawling nodes will still see the listings].

Added an optional alternative contact field to give buyers and sellers the ability to give each other more relevant contact information easily.

2.0

Developer Chris Pacia got a 2.0 OpenBazaar node running over Tor earlier this week, having made the necessary adjustments to IPFS to allow Tor traffic. This is still early and needs more work, but it appears likely that OpenBazaar 2.0 will be able to use Tor.

An option has been added for users to choose their preferred bitcoind node over the built-in SPV wallet.

Identity theft and ecommerce fraud are costing billions of dollars each year, and have been increasing in recent years. Fortunately, due to the technical design of Bitcoin – along with one of its most powerful features, multisig – both buyers and sellers online have alternatives that can reduce the likelihood of being involved in identity theft or fraud.

In the United States, an estimated 17.6 million people were victims of identity theft in 2014 (the most recent year numbers are available). The most common types of misused information were bank accounts (38% of cases) and credit cards (42% of cases).

It isn’t surprising that millions of cases of identity theft occur each year based on bank accounts and credit cards. The numbers that allow access to those accounts are unchanging, they are tied directly to your identity, and they are being stored in databases by any number of retailers who you’ve done business with. Those databases are a treasure trove for cybercriminals, and they are constantly under attack. The list of high-profile breaches in recent years is impressive: 56 million credit cards in 2014 by Home Depot, 70 million in 2013 by Target, 76 million households in the summer of 2014 by JP Morgan Chase, and the list goes on and on.

Bitcoin works differently. The numbers that give you access to your bitcoins aren’t shared publicly, and they don’t make their way into any databases. You don’t need to trust a business to store your Bitcoin information properly like you would a credit card – the business doesn’t have any information to store. There are no treasure troves of data for cybercriminals to steal.

Your bitcoin also aren’t tied directly to your identity. You can choose to give the merchant as much or as little information about yourself as you want. This gives buyers some assurances that their purchases won’t increase the likelihood of identity theft, and it gives merchants one less piece of data they need to protect. Identity theft based on bitcoin transactions is practically impossible.

People are starting to notice Bitcoin’s potential for reducing identity theft. In April, Business Wire reported that a recent survey showed victims of identity theft were taking action to prevent it from happening again, and 10% of them were using alternative currencies like Bitcoin.

Multisig

There is another aspect to Bitcoin that helps prevent online fraud. A feature called multisignature – often shortened to multisig – allows for bitcoins within a certain address to be controlled by more than one person.

The majority of bitcoins are owned by individuals, just like cash and other forms of money. With multisig you can now have multiple people, or even organizations, control the same coins. The multiple parties must then come to agreement before the bitcoins can be moved out of the account. There are many applications for multisig including increased security of funds, more equitable control of funds in non-profits and other organizations, and the ability to create complex contracting systems.

Perhaps the most useful application of multisig is escrow. A common use is the two-of-three multisig. This means there are three parties involved, and any two of them must agree before the bitcoins can be moved from escrow. The buyer and seller both choose a third party they trust, and then the buyer sends the funds into multisig. If the seller delivers as promised, then the buyer and seller both agree to release the funds, and since only two out of three parties are needed, the funds are then released from escrow. If there’s a dispute and buyer and seller can’t come to an agreement, then the third party is brought in to determine the winning party and join with them to release funds.

Consider how this is different from the existing system. In the current system with a stolen credit card, a buyer can order something and the seller will ship it as normal. When the real owner of the credit card realizes this and the credit card company reverses the transaction, the vendor typically is forced to eat the cost of their product.

Stolen credit cards aren’t the only way fraud is accomplished. Buyers can claim no delivery even when they’ve received a product. Ecommerce platforms and credit card companies are notorious for siding with buyers over vendors, and often don’t do their due diligence to determine who is really at fault. Vendors can also defraud buyers too, taking money but not delivering or delivering inferior products.

Bitcoin, along with multisig, prevents much of this fraud from occurring. There is no credit card company controlling Bitcoin that can reverse transactions, giving vendors the assurance that they control their own money. There’s also the ability for buyers and sellers to come to agreement about who will provide their dispute resolution via multisig, instead of being forced to use the ecommerce platform itself. As long as both parties choose a reputable third party, there’s little chance that fraud will be successful.

Bitcoin and multisig are useful tools to prevent fraud, but they’re not perfect. Bitcoins can be stolen, and once taken they’re unlikely to ever be returned. Protecting them takes some technical knowledge and the learning curve can be steeper than other payment systems. Although Bitcoin isn’t perfect and won’t eliminate all fraud online, it’s a powerful alternative for those willing to use them.

OpenBazaar

Giving buyers and sellers the ability to prevent fraud is one of many reasons OpenBazaar relies completely on Bitcoin. OpenBazaar also has two-of-three multisig built in, with an open marketplace of moderators who offer dispute resolution. If you want more privacy in online trade, with no fees, no censorship, and better protection from fraud, try OpenBazaar now.

Recent Updates

Recent Updates

Recent Updates

In these posts we take a look at some unique members of the OpenBazaar ecosystem. Today we interview a vendor selling store hosting, Space for eCommerce, who has been connected to the OpenBazaar community since the beginning! You can find Space for eCommerce on OpenBazaar at @storefore/store, on Duosearch here and on their own website at spacefore.com

Tell us a bit about yourself?

Brian Dunbar – husband, father of five, Catholic, IT professional since 1990. The majority of my career I’ve been a systems administrator: making sure servers are up and pumping out bits. Systems administration is a speciality that rewards attention to detail and obsessive nitpicking, and I do pretty good with it.

I no longer recall how I heard about OpenBazaar. I had a few days of downtime over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2015. I installed the prototype, played around with testnet. That software, the constant and excellent progress, the folks working for OB1, and the investment they’d attracted, convinced me that OpenBazaar has real potential. Like this;

The last thirty years have demonstrated that cheap, de-centralized and open will beat closed, centralized and expensive.

There used to be a plethora of network protocols – ways of connecting computers. Token Ring, ARCNet, and many others. Ethernet came along and was (then) inferior to everything else on the market. It was cheap. It was not owned by IBM: anyone could build an ethernet network card. Now, ‘ethernet’ is synonymous with ‘network’. Nobody uses anything else.

CompuServe, BIX, AOL, DELPHI, Prodigy used to be ‘the’ way to go online – you paid up each month, logged into a walled garden and did your thing with the community. The world wide web came along and … they are no more.

Examples are legion, I need not belabor the point. They have one thing in common. They were closed and expensive and are now in the museum next to the apatosaurus skeleton.

OpenBazaar is cheap, decentralized and open.

The lesson is clear.

What do you make?

I provide managed hosting for open bazaar stores. I’ll keep the stores running, backup on a regular basis, update when required, and whatever fiddly bits are needed to keep the store online and visible. My market are shop owners, business guys, regular folks who want to sell their goods, and leave the ‘IT stuff’ to the professionals.

Why are you selling your product on OpenBazaar?

It is, basically, a space that is under-serviced by guys like me. Market opportunity! I hope to become one of the go-to guys for hosting, and leverage that into other services in the OB space.

How has your experience been with OpenBazaar so far?

Pretty good, thanks for asking.

There are issues – but there are always issues with software, and the OB1 team is kicking ass on bugs. And they’re busy in active development for OpenBazaar 2. I’ve taken it for a spin and it’s going to be a tremendous improvement on the current Open Bazaar.

How familiar are you with Bitcoin?

I’d heard of Bitcoin but prior to last year I’d never done anything with Bitcoin.

Which is odd, I suppose, because politically I’m Anarcho-Capitalist. I should be thinking about it night, and day.

What can I say – I’m a busy guy. It simply hadn’t come up.

Now .. I’ve got a side project for getting involved with bitcoin mining, and I’m plotting how to get a zcash mining farm up and going … it’s a good life, if you don’t falter.

What changes would you like to see to OpenBazaar to make it more useful for you?

I have a few suggestions. All of them will have to be addressed in order for OpenBazaar to be useful in the long run.

Multiple Users and roles

Eventually, an actual business with multiple users is going to use OpenBazaar. Those guys operate with multiple people, who have different roles. They’ll demand accountability, and role separation. This isn’t just those guys being anal, but in many cases required by law or auditors.

Credentials

The credentials are in plain-text configuration file, which value is stored in a database. This works, and it’s reasonably secure. I understand why it’s that way. But we can do better!

Failover

I want to put a load balancer in front of an OpenBazaar store, running on multiple servers. Downtime for one server does not mean downtime for the store.

This week we’re giving away three copies of Andreas Antonopoulos’s new book “The Internet of Money.”

Front End

Current version update: made address fields flexible, added a contact field to the address, removed time zones, improved the purchasing flow interface and fixed various bugs.

2.0 version update: improvements to the user page to allow dynamic lists of social information and live updates when data changes.

Designs

Designed the listing detail screen to open in an overlay instead of a new page. This will provide a better experience for the user and ensure they do not lose their spot within a store or channel grid view of listings. Also worked in listing variant options and touched up the checkout modal to work well with these new changes.